• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.593-602
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• 2019

The healthcare industry, a high-value-added business, continues to grow with the aging of the population and the development of convergence medical technology. In particular, the medical tourism industry is being pushed by advanced countries. Korea is also actively supporting projects to attract international patients. However, there is a lack of prior research on Korea's medical interpreter policy. This study analyzes the current status and problems of medical interpreter policy for international patients, and presents the task. Problems include insufficient policy control towers, lack of links with local governments, lack of expertise of medical interpreters, poor quality of medical interpreting services, and poor treatment of medical interpreters. As improvement measures, it is proposed to establish a policy control tower, strengthen the link with local governments, switch to a medical interpreter system, diversify the language of medical interpreting qualification test, improve the quality of medical interpreting service, internalize the training process for medical interpreter, give preferential treatment to medical interpreters, utilize the nurse, and train multicultural medical personnel. I hope that this study will contribute to the development of the medical tourism industry.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.322-333
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• 2013

This study aimed at analyzing and understanding medical tourism patients' pattern of different countries. For this purpose it followed up the international patients who visited W hospitals for spine treatment for last 3 years. In additon, it proposed key marketing strategies for attraction of more patients in the future. Satisfaction survey for 91 foreigner hospitalized patients were conducted from year 2010 to 2011. Each country of the patients showed slightly different motivations of visiting, consumer pattern and satisfaction of medical and non medical services. The current study analyzed factors, socio-demographic characteristics, purposes of visit, duration of stay in Korea, total number of visits to Korea, companions, plan of care, reasons for choice of W Hospital, expenses for medical care, total cost of staying in Korea. The results of this study showed that patients visited Korea more frequently were more satisfied with the medical care. Patients who planned to use medical care prior to visit Korea were more satisfied. Patients who thought he/she paid reasonable medical cost were more satisfied. Invitation to familiarization tour, clarification of medical cost, and provision of high quality medical care were recommended for the higher satisfaction of foreign patients. Fostering of specialized hospitals were recommended.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.107-135
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• 2016

Medical tour can be said to be a new high added-value tour industry of 21st century. The development of varied and distinguished medical tour products by each country will further vitalize the medical tour industry. As the interest in such medical tour increases, it is necessary to analyze the demand and interests of tourists accurately and prepare medical tour products to be provided in order to develop and promote medical tour products. The government considers the medical tour industry as an industry with high expected effects in job creation through promotion of experts in global healthcare industry and national economy development through high added-value creation, and has expanded aid policies in medical tour field with improvement of medical tour immigration system, one-stop service system for medical tourists, and medical tour labor force promotion system. Nevertheless, there are disputes between foreign patients and medical tour inviting businesses, along with medical accident disputes between foreign patients and medical staff and disputes with those working in the tourism industry. This article reviews the types of disputes occurring around the inviting businesses related to medical tours and tried to review the resolutions. Through this, it was found that medical tour inviting businesses have the responsibility to connect the mediated benefits and risks and also the responsibility to process the tasks. Thus, in case dispute occurs due to passive actions from establishing agency agreement to active mediation results, it is difficult to escape the liabilities. Also, in a medical tour agency contract, the inviting business must be aware that it bears the responsibility to explain and advise the details on benefits and risks to foreign patients. The "Guide to arbitration system for resolution of medical disputes with foreign patients" by Korea Health Industry Development Institute Act presents a method to resolve disputes according to the [laws on medical accident damage relief and medical dispute arbitration] in case a dispute due to medical accidents occurs to foreign patients when the foreign patients prepare diagnosis agreement, Whether such method is sufficient to protect foreign patients, however, is thought to require discussions from more diverse perspectives. In order to vitalize medical tourism, the development of diverse products is also important, but the countermeasures against related disputes should also be prepared. Such is expected to contribute to a greater advancement based on trust of foreign medical tourists alongside excellent medical technologies.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.188-198
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• 2016

This study explored the experience of clinical nurses caring for foreign wives in Korea. A narrative study approach within the qualitative research paradigm was applied in this study. The data were collected using individual in-depth interviews with 10 clinical nurses who had at least 5 years working experiences caring for foreign wives and their children in the Women and Children's clinical setting. The narrative stories of the clinical nurses were analyzed in the frame of culture-bounded nursing care. In the culture-bounded nursing care, ethnocentric viewpoints, acceptable viewpoints, and culture-based viewpoints were identified within the time frame. Significantly, the narrator identified herself as a therapeutic caregiver in the culture-based viewpoints providing tailored caregiving for foreign wives. This study requires cultural sensitivity of nurses who care for the people with different cultural backgrounds. Self-awareness would be the starting point to reach culturally competent nursing care.

• 건강소식
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.42-43
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• 2010

정부는 글로벌 헬스케어를 신성장동력 산업 중 5대 고부가 서비스 분야에 포함시키는 한편, 의료관광의 활성화를 위해 외국인 환자유치를 허용하는 의료법을 개정했다. 또 의료 서비스산업 선진화 방안도 발표하는 등 오는 2013년까지 외국인 환자 20만명을 유치해 의료 서비스를 차세대 성장동력으로 키우겠다는 목표를 내세웠다. 이처럼 정부가 의료관광에 관심을 기울이는 것은 황금알을 낳을 것이라는 기대 때문이다. 세계의 의료관광 현황과 우리나라의 발전 과제를 짚어본다.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.415-426
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• 2016

With a rapidly increasing number of foreign patients in Korea, it is necessary to manage and enhance the quality of nursing care for foreign inpatients through the promotion of studies on practical nursing care experience. This study is a qualitative study conducted to understand and describe the care experiences of nurses responsible for non-English speaking foreign inpatients. There were 10 nurses with a clinical career of more than two years included in this study for analysis. Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Five themes emerged from the analysis. 'Aware of cultural differences', 'establish trusting relationships through all my heart', 'additional nursing task', 'empathy for genuine nursing', 'sorriness and relieved'. The results of this study provided the understanding on the experiences of nurses, who do not speak English, but still responsible for providing care to foreign inpatients. Despite the language barrier, cultural differences, and work overload, nurses caring for foreign patients struggled with authenticity in nursing. On the other hand, as there was a lack of system resources, such as manuals and training materials in various languages other than English, institutions should put forth greater effort and resources to be prepared to care for foreign inpatients.

• 보건세계
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.46-49
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• 2010

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.59-64
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• 2016

The purpose of this study intend to develop the automatic voice system for language communicating over foreign patients in testing of magnetic resonance imaging. Used sentences for the automatic voice system was selected with twelve sentences and five foreign languages in hospital in use. These translated texts were provided free of charge from Oddcast's website, which is recorded each language-specific voice as Wav files, The recorded audio file were produced by the two types of a power-point show of MS-office 2013(extension; ppsx) form and Web-enabled system using the PHP program to be applied in the mobile phone environment. It is considered to relieve the stress about an language barrier to medical technician and the voice system designed with the variable language will be enhanced the diagnostic information on foreign patients. Because automatic voice system designed for this study can enhance the understanding of test in between korean medical technician and foreign patients, It will be expected to utilize more usefully in clinical practice.

• Korea Science and Art Forum
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.87-97
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• 2019

The study began in recent years with the aim of grasping the nation's medical status following the fast-growing trend of international medical tourism and attracting foreign patients, among other things, Busan, which ranks second in attracting foreign patients after the nation's capital, Seoul, has been highly active in the past eight years, with foreign patients rising by about 426 percent, and Russian patients entering the sea. In addition, Gimhae and Changwon, the Busan-based Gyeongsangnam-do region, ranked first and second in number of foreign residents, and are inhabited by a variety of foreign workers. Medical institutions, such as hospitals, should be able to find directions within hospitals. It is also a space where information in various languages, including Korean, English, Chinese, or Russian, must be delivered in a single medium. Based on this research, the purpose of this research is to provide converged information that helps foreigners who are not familiar with Korean language easily understand the proposed recognition system when visiting hospitals. Therefore, this paper is applied to a multi-language survey of six medical institutions (A, B, C, D, E, F) at the university hospital in Busan, and 10 medical institutions (R, J) in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province with high foreign residents. Research results and contents are as follows. First, the results of analyzing the design of the sinusoidal system show that the font uses colorless Gothic fonts, arrows, and pictograms to introduce the design of a typical hospital sign system. Second, the results of the multi-lingual situation were found to have only two languages in the system, such as Korean and English, and to have four languages, including Korean, English, Chinese, and Russian, according to their geographical location. However, it was judged that most medical institutions currently have only two languages (Korean, English) that may cause some discomfort in terms of language for foreign patients in non-English speaking countries. Based on these findings, it is necessary to propose designs that are considered by Koreans as well as foreign users in the use of multilingual hospital sign systems.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.560-568
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• 2016

In Korea, management support has been given at the government level for activities to attract foreign patients. China and Russia ranked on top of the lists for in-bound medical tourists. The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of medical tourists in Korea, the demand for information, and the level of satisfaction regarding their experiences. 100 cases of medical tourists from China and Russia were collected through the mail survey. While Chinese used beauty, skin-care related products, Russian experienced the grocery shopping and wellness related services. Most patients from both nationalities experienced the traditional food in Korea and wanted to know about beauty products. Chinese wanted to get more information about Korean traditional food Russian. Finally, Russian showed higher overall satisfaction scores than Chinese respondents. If we reflect these results as a contents, it can be useful to attract foreign patients.